Posts Tagged Novel

A Mistake Carl Shuker VUP The literary page-turner – a rare beast. Pip Adam can do it. John Colapinto managed it with both fiction and non-fiction and here Carl Shuker manages it and essentially turns non-fiction into fiction, or frames fiction via non-fiction and/or vice-versa. But what’s true, instantly, of A Mistake, his fifth novel, is that the writing is electric, the […]

The Delines The Imperial El Cortez Records It’s an easy shot to take – and, hey, I’m all about that! – but this new album by The Delines is easily the finest record I’ve heard so far in 2019! More than that, I’m sure it’ll be on my end-of-year list as one of 2019’s greatest records. It is, from the very […]

Welcome to episode 137 of Sweetman Podcast with support from our sponsors – T Leaf T, Yeastie Boys and La Petite Chocolat. I had a chat with Mary McCallum. She’s just published her first book of poems, the excellent XYZ of Happiness. But Mary was playing the long-game, she’s a known, established poet – having studied under Bill Manhire when his […]

I’m usually on RNZ once a month to have a chat about some new albums. But the other day I got the call up to present a Music Feature for the Afternoons show. This topic was Music-related novels – books written about music and musicians that are not biographies, not non-fiction. We played some songs and talked about […]

Welcome to episode 122 of Sweetman Podcast with support from our sponsors – T Leaf T, Yeastie Boys and Le Petite Chocolat. Given her proximity to where the podcast takes place – she lives four or five houses down the road from me – it feels like it’s taken forever to get Pip Adam on the podcast. It didn’t take winning […]

Well, he’s a cricket fan, so he’ll enjoy the mention of a “double century” – but one thing I learned a while back is that you have to pick your moments and celebrate your own milestones in this writing-online caper. You have to turn up. And turn up. And turn up again. And if you […]

Francis Spufford & Elizabeth Knox Talk About God Circa One, Circa Theatre Saturday, March 10 This Writers & Readers session featured a conversation about God between long-time correspondents Francis Spufford (UK) and Elizabeth Knox (NZ). It was, if you’ll pardon the pun, a spirited conversation. It was lively, funny and often irritating. For a start, […]

Welcome to episode 104 of Sweetman Podcast with support from our sponsors – T Leaf T, Yeastie Boys and Le Petite Chocolat. I had a chat with Megan Dunn – she’s an artist, art-critic and writer. She’s recently released the book Tinderbox – which I loved. I contacted Megan for a chat because I’d enjoyed some of the press and interviews around Tinderbox […]

Heather, The Totality Matthew Weiner Little, Brown and Company; First Edition edition Matthew Weiner is best known as the creator of the TV show Mad Men, ahead of that he was a writer on The Sopranos – this is his first novel. It’s a slim volume, almost a novella really – the prose is sparse, […]

All The Dirty Parts: A Novel Daniel Handler Bloomsbury Daniel Handler has made his name under a penname first and foremost – his Lemony Snicket books are not the only string to his bow though, and under his own (real) name he has released a handful of (adult) novels. The latest, All The Dirty Parts, […]

Welcome to episode 89 of Sweetman Podcast with support from our sponsors – T Leaf T, Yeastie Boys and Le Petite Chocolat. Here I had a chat with Kirsten McDougall. She is a writer, publicist and literary manager. We discuss her various roles and talk about her two books, The Invisible Rider and Tess. The Invisible Rider is a 2012 release, […]